A House Full of Women, by Joan O'Neill (Coronet, £5.99 in UK)

I honestly didn't think they wrote - or, at least, published - books like this any more. Books in which relentless respectability is the norm, yuppiedom is the aspiration, French knickers are naughty and an Italian stallion is Mr Right. The heroine is a good girl who burns to live happily ever after, her mother a rebel who once ran away with the circus but has been well and truly punished by a drab life sentence of marriage to a kindly but dull older man, her granny a feisty shopkeeper who likes an odd flutter on the horses. On the other hand, if all that sounds good to you - what are you waiting for, encouragement?